Takeshita`s Political `Suicide` Satisfies An Angry Japan

April 26, 1989|By Ronald E. Yates, Chicago Tribune.

TOKYO — In tradition-rich Japan, where ritual public suicide has long been a means of salvaging one`s honor, Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita`s televised resignation Tuesday to accept responsibility for a stock-trading and bribery scandal appears to have satisified a furious nation that for the past several weeks has been demanding a political bloodletting.

With an obviously shaken Takeshita attempting to mask his disappointment and disgrace behind a frozen smile during the news conference hastily called to announce his intention to resign, most in this nation applauded the 65-year-old prime minster`s decision-although many were still angry that it had taken so long.

For nine months, the Recruit stock trading scandal has hogged Japanese headlines, implicating dozens of prominent politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen. For nine months Takeshita and others in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party had denied any wrongdoing.

Then last week, before a special session of the Diet (Parliament)

Takeshita admitted, after months of denials, that he had received about $1.2 million in political donations from the Recruit Corp., a huge publishing and data processing conglomerate charged with selling shares of its unlisted stock at cut-rate prices to politicians and bureaucrats between 1984 and 1986 in exchange for political favors.

When Recruit finally was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1987, its per-share price almost tripled and those privileged few-including personal secretaries to Takeshita, former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, former Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and the Liberal Democratic Party Sec. Gen. Shintaro Abe-who bought the stock reaped huge profits.

Many others, such as Takeshita, received political ``donations`` from Recruit-either in the form of stock or cash, say Japanese government prosecutors.

Wednesday, with the nation still buzzing about Takeshita`s resignation, a former top aide to the prime minister committed suicide, authorities said. Ihei Aoki, whose involvement in the scandal was the first link with Takeshita`s own part in the affair, was found in his Tokyo apartment, where he had bled to death after cutting his wrists.

Aoki, 58, who had not been arrested or charged, nevertheless had left his position as a Takeshita aide because of disclosures that he took in nearly $30,000 from purchases of unlisted Recruit stock. Thirteen people have been arrested, with many more arrests expected.

``The Japanese political system is corrupt from top to bottom,`` said Waichiro Muranaka, a machine tool salesman from Japan`s northern city of Niigata. ``It is about time Takeshita did his duty. He is lucky. In the old days, he would have been required to cut his belly open.``

What Takeshita did do Tuesday, however, was the political equivalent of that most final of Japanese acts of atonement. It effectively ended the career of a man known for his quiet, behind-the-scenes negotiating, political fence- mending and ``fixing`` ability.

Ironically, the only fence Takeshita couldn`t ``fix`` was the one encircling his own political back yard. By first denying and then admitting he had benefited from Recruit`s largess, Takeshita not only lost face before the Japanese people, he placed the Liberal Democratic Party in danger of losing its 34-year political hold on this country.

Takeshita, who became Japan`s 17th postwar prime minister in November, 1987, had six months left in his two-year term. In the wake of Takeshita`s announcement, focus shifted to Masayoshi Ito, 75, a former foreign minister and the man who in 1980 stepped in to serve as prime minister following the sudden death in office of Masayoshi Ohira.

However, Ito, who is suffering from severe diabetes and not strong physically, told reporters he has no intention of succeeding Takeshita.

Despite his reluctance, sources in the party think Ito still will be drafted to serve in a caretaker government-at least until October.

Before Takeshita`s resignation, the scandal had effectively paralyzed Japan`s government. Debate on the nation`s 1989 budget ended when opposition parties, angry over Takeshita`s handling of the Recruit scandal, boycotted the parliament.

However, following Takeshita`s announcement Tuesday, the nation`s three main opposition parties-Japan Socialist Party, Komeito or Clean Government Party and Democratic Socialist Party-announced they will resume debate on the budget for fiscal 1989, which began April 1 under a provisional emergency budget.

Takako Doi, head of Japan`s Socialist Party, called for the three main opposition parties to meet in an effort to topple Liberal Democratic rule of Japan. The party controls 297 seats of Japan`s powerful 512-seat Lower House and a majority of seats in the less powerful 252-seat Upper House.

However, half of the seats in the Upper House will be up for election in July, and many Liberal Democratic officials feared the party would take a beating unless Takeshita resigned.

Few of Japan`s business and industrial leaders are eager to see the party lose control. There is little trust in this strong capitalist enclave in the socialist or communist parties, and few Japanese consider them a viable alternative to the Liberal Democrats.

Late Tuesday, Michio Watanabe, head of the party`s Policy Research Council, said that, in the wake of Takeshita`s resignation, the most important goal for the government now is passage of the stalled budget, not finding a successor to Takeshita.

Watanabe was one of the few Liberal Democrat politicians who dared praise the accomplishments of the short-lived Takeshita government, including liberalization of the nation`s agricultural markets and the introduction of a controversial and widely opposed 3 percent consumption tax.

``What matters most is not how long a government lasts,`` Watanabe said,

``but what that government does.``

Millions of Japanese, delighted at the unpopular Takeshita`s downfall, agree.